The Fairy Passage [Complete]

I ran outside, eager to see what I would get from the fairies that morning. For a whole week we had sending good will gifts back and forth. The day before my sister and I had left deflated balloon boats in the moss filled creek. The bright primary colors floated back and forth along the small stream of water. I could just picture tiny people sitting in their boats to travel from bank to bank after the rain, while their wings were waterlogged.

I treasured everything they left for me on the bank of their tiny river. The wild flowers, I dried by tying them upside down from the handle of the big green trunk in my room. The four leaf clovers and interesting leaves were laminated into bookmarks by the machine in our homeschool room and used only in my favorite books.

One night, I woke up to see what looked like bubbles floating up to my second story bedroom window, catching in trees and bouncing off the glass pane. I cupped my hands around the window, squinting, trying to see down to the pavement through the dark, only half expecting to see my sister standing there, a bubble wand in her hand. I didn’t, but that wasn’t proof either way.

It lasted nearly the whole month of March. But one morning, I checked the creek a little too early, and didn’t find anything. The boats we had left hadn’t moved, and there was nothing from the fairies. My sister was right behind me, and sheepishly showed me what she had behind her back; the flowers she was going to leave on the moss bank. I think she thought I’d be upset, but I wasn’t upset or surprised, just a little sad the game was over.

“Wait a minute.” I said, while we walked back to the house, the purple flowers from my sister, not the fairies, still in my hand. “Did you go outside one night and blow bubbles underneath my window?”

“No. Why would I go outside and blow bubbles in the dark?”

She never did admit to it, and really, I don’t think she did. I don’t think it would have occurred to her. It wasn’t really her fairy M.O. I probably dreamed it. But it seems like it happened. So fairies exist in a Schrödinger state for me, being real and fake.